Dice have been known since the days of the Palamedes (circa 1,244 B.C.), but the use of cubes with numbered sides for gambling purposes is probably much earlier in time. There is no period in history and no nation in which some form of dice has not been used. Dice depicted on the early Egyptian monuments excavated at Thebes can scarcely be distinguished from the dice made today and their use is attested by laws regulating the games played with them in ancient Greece and Rome, as well as in most European countries.